Big Shot's Funeral

A cross-cultural Hollywood farce, this behind-the-scenes comedy from Beijing stars Ge You as a cameraman hired to shoot making-of footage for a big U.S. studio's The Last Emperor-styled historical epic. Ge befriends the film's increasingly erratic director--a flaky filmmaking legend (played with befitting bewilderment by Donald Sutherland) who believes that the two men share an inherent cinematic kinship. So when the big shot has a heart attack and thinks he's dying, he asks Ge to arrange a "comedy funeral," a celebration of life he thinks is in the Chinese tradition. With Sutherland in a coma, Ge's attempts to set up suitable services become an exercise in excess and crass commercialism when a wannabe concert promoter pal (Ying Da) begins planning an extravagant, corporate-sponsored circus of a ceremony to be broadcast live on TV, a major would-be shebang that goes seriously awry when Sutherland recovers, throwing the proverbial wrench into the works. Director/co-writer Feng Xiaogang displays a mordant, whimsical sense of humor, but the movie is handicapped by a lack of plot momentum and by the director's apparent lack of experience with English (Sutherland is the only person in the cast who delivers his non-Mandarin lines convincingly). Optional. (R. Blackwelder)